BY DR DIANA TOLMIE
As a Brisbane-based woodwind doubler, I’ve had the privilege of performing in many professional music theatre productions over the past 30 years. The city has contributed to nothing short of an eventful career.
The 2011 production of Wicked held at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre was disrupted for over two weeks by a major flood. The riverside venue was swamped with muddy brown water, the carpark filled, and the building’s affected basement electrics meant the cast, crew, and orchestra had to be stood down. Force majeure was cited.
During 2020 in the same venue, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory made it to the first sound balance before ‘you-know-what’ happened – hello force majeure. Then in 2022, the skies opened and cried non-stop for three days, causing the production of Frozen to halt – the flood filling the QPAC carpark and attempting round two at the electrics that remained in the basement. Force majeure. Let it go…
(Legend has it once the water receded, they found eight dead bull sharks. If not true, it makes for a hell of a story.)
Other riverside venues similarly suffered to lesser or greater extent: the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, the Brisbane Jazz Club, the Queensland Theatre Company, plus one waterfront restaurant aptly named Drift.
Brisbane has more recently been called “a city with a river problem”. But has not the river always been there?
QPAC is a federal building, so it was no surprise when the Sister Act company were yesterday told they would be taking precautions, closing for initially three days owing to the unassuming name on everyone’s lips: “Alfred”, quickly followed by – you guessed it – force majeure.
As I sit here at the computer with a cyclone slowly spinning 20 kilometres east of my house terrorising the coastline, I think about how force majeure has become the “new normal”. I am not sure either are the best terminology. These terms do not express the emotions, viscerally felt, every time I play what seems like the (premature) last show of the affected performance season.
Yesterday’s matinee discussions in the band room between Act 1 and 2 confirmed our conflicting feelings were unanimous. On one hand, a professional sense of “do your best” was ingrained – the punters have paid for their tickets, and would like the temporary escapism from their increasing distressing reality. We are being paid for our services – there is a job to do, park your personal baggage. Those none the wiser would have seen an excellent show, without knowing that an underlying combination of fear and anxiety pervaded through the band. Fear that one’s house and loved ones were likely to blow away a la Wizard of Oz; and anxiety for a future where, if continuing practice remains as is, the artform would be impossible to sustain.
Despite being so seasoned in riverside and zoonotic crises, I said to my band colleagues, “I don’t think I will ever get used to this feeling”. Our musical director, ever attuned to audience moods, also felt the anxiety emanating from the stalls. They too, were on edge about what is to come and whether they had done a stupid thing by attending.
Why build yet another theatre on the river when climate change continues to give us not-so-subtle hints that this is just not a good idea?
Walking back to the car after curtain close, I passed the fifth QPAC theatre construction site, its exposed insulation flapping angrily in the increasing breeze, and thought “why?”. Why build yet another theatre on the river when climate change continues to give us not-so-subtle hints that this is just not a good idea? And it goes beyond the basic pragmatics of questioning geography.
Covid et al. ensured that event insurance increased. To accommodate this, ticket prices have been raised; musician wages, not so much. Smaller venues have closed in no small part to such costs, reduced beverage sales and change in ticket purchasing (low and late) that were too much to bear. I would like to say change for the better is on the horizon, but it won’t be while the natural disasters continue – force majeure. Act of God.
But let’s leave God out of this for a bit and say no – this is more predictable than we currently appreciate. It seems we are just not observing nature.
A colleague once told me the first major low-pressure systems of summer is usually a good indication of where cyclones will position themselves. Queensland had one south-east off Brisbane in December 2024. Patterns do exist.
My humble opinion is that if we want our artforms to survive and thrive, we truly need to rethink how and where we build our cultural venues. It seems in Australia, they need to be relocated plus water, wind, fire, disease and – dare I say it – terror proof.
It’s a big ask, and I am not so naïve to realise what this means for private and government venue investors. High cost to build, ramifications on new communities, improved road and public transport, and revised acceptable sound levels in built-up environments.
But I have a funny feeling early proactivity will outweigh the cost of current and future insurance claims and subsequent detrimental social impact.
I don’t think passive acceptance of force majeure or “the new normal” is the way forward.
Leon C. Megginson, a professor paraphrasing Charles Darwin, stated “the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself”.
But considering today’s imminent weather, I find Dolly Parton’s (and earlier, Cora L.V. Hatch’s) statement more relevant: “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
Given the rising sea levels, our iconic Sydney Opera House might also give this pause for thought.
Featured image by Lesli Whitecotton via Unsplash.
Image above: Diana Tolmie.
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